Many of you on Facebook know that I have been on the hunt for a warm, soft, chewy chocolate chip cookie. And, let me tell you that I have not found such a delicacy. I’ve heard rumors. They sell chocolate chips at HomePlus. Sure. I believe it, but do they sell butter-flavored Crisco which is the magic ingredient to all great cookies? I think not.

Koreans don’t have the option of shoveling lard based disks into their mouths like Americans do. It’s their loss, really.

On to hypothesis number 2: Koreans can hike. This isn’t like walking through the woods of southern Illinois. This is borderline rock climbing, I’m talking about. You should have seen this elderly couple booking up those mountains. It was nuts!

Saturday morning, we set off from the church at 7am. It was a 3 hour bus ride to Seonunsan Provincial Park in Jeollabuk-do Gochang-gun. It couldn’t have been a more beautiful day.

Be prepared for lots of pictures:

As you can see this was too early in the morning for Josh. I listened to Abba the whole way here, what's his problem?

Our group had matching badges so that we'd recognize each other on the trail.

Prof. Oh showing us the different trails. Sign us up for the the 5-hour, 3-mountain special please! That 3-hour trail is for babies.

Cherry blossoms and genuine Asian architecture. You can't get better than this.

The entrance to the park.

Some of our pals, Nick, Ben, Jake, and Bethany.

Yep, we climbed up there.

Cute little Buddhist lantern, they were all over the place.

What did I tell you?

Entrance to Seonunsa Temple. As you can see swastikas mean something different here.

A monk praying in one of the larger temples

Funny story behind this picture: Josh asked our friend Min if it was ok to take pictures of the monks praying in the temples. He misunderstood and went into the temple and interrupted the monk who was praying, to ask if he would take a picture with us. I felt really bad, but what an amazing photo opportunity!

There were 4 freaky guys like this in the temple.

We made it to the top of Mountain #1

Check out that view!

Mountain #2!

I kind of felt deathy after we made it halfway up Mountain #2. But, I was determined to keep going. I didn’t want to be “that sissy girl who couldn’t handle the hard trail”

There was no way in heck I was going up on that boulder!

We found this nice little alter in a cave.

A Buddha giftshop!

Here he is again, Mountain #3

The stone steps that took us up to the Dosoram Temple. They were pretty brutal.

This temple was on the mountain. It was a chill scene.

And there you have it. 20 something pictures of our hiking adventure. Josh and I were not cut out for the “hard” trail. Not at all. My calves were throbbing on the way home. Poor Josh got dehydrated, and I think he overexerted himself, he’s still not feeling quite right.

The hike was on Saturday, so Sunday we were way too sore and pooped to do anything, but we did finally make it out the door for dinner. On the way home we stopped at PB (Paris Baguette) because I haven’t given up on the hunt for chocolate chip cookies.

Here's what I found!

Unfortunately these Pepperidge Farm cookies are not soft and chewy like my dream cookie, but they will have to do in the mean time. So, I guess the fact that I did find cookies in Korea proves my first hypothesis false. But Hypothesis #2 still stands. I think Korean women are thin because they hike multiple mountains in a day. Duh.